31
votes
Suggestion: Find a new name for "Vote" button
Vote seems to imply a choice between two or more things. I like how there are no downvotes, but having one option sounds a bit odd to me to be called a vote. Also, having a unique term may help it stand out from other sites.
Some suggested alternatives:
- Increment
- Boost
- Bump
- Rise
- Hike
Anyone else have any ideas?
Just call it a "plus". There's no downvotes, and there will be vote weight. So if you "plus" something, that's showing that you find it valuable.
I don't think that we'll ever get away from it being like/dislike without a lot of recurring reminders.
Besides, "plus" is a symbol, like "tilde".
plussed
EDIT: I had an idea after reading this post. How about like the +1 idea but instead of plus one it's ~1 and assigns between 0 to 4 votes randomly?
It's play on the common usage of tilde as "approximate" and maybe helps in some way with obscuring analysis needed for vote manipulation (not really sure on that last part TBH).
I like the idea of referring to (what we would previously call) "downvoted" posts as "nonplussed"
Oh yessssssss. That makes things even more amazing. :D
Everyone is going to instantly associate that to Google+ whether it's intended or not. Look at Youtube Red being associated to Redtube, or many other times where online communities have clashed branding/terminology with others.
I really think for Tildes to stand on its own legs, it needs to start from scratch and create unique terminology and branding in every aspect.
Same goes for lots of the suggestions here. "Bump" is already in heavy common usage on forums for decades now as a way to bump up a thread. It doesn't make sense as a voting term.
Considering the idea of Tildes is to move away from karma-whoring and vote-brigading and all that, I personally think that instead of any kind of voting, it's just a word like "Recommend" and the score is how many people recommend it as worth looking at. No scores, no votes, no gamification, just keep it simple.
Its a great idea. I like it.
I'm still strongly opposed to "bump". You have to think about it from the perspective of someone new coming to the site and looking at the buttons. Will they assume that a "Bump" button basically means "vote"? No, because "bump" already has an established meaning that's well-known and isn't similar to voting at all. This will be even worse once the "activity" sort is added, because then there is basically bumping. I'm definitely not stuck on "vote", but at least the meaning of it is pretty clear to someone new.
I think "boost" isn't bad, but one thing that's a bit weird about it is that reddit originally started out with its votes called "boosts". This is pretty obscure reddit trivia and I doubt many people know about it anyway, but it's there. You can see it in this very old archive of reddit, all the posts say "with 5 boosts" and such. Even a capture from the next week has it switched to "with score 5". I'm definitely going for an "old reddit" thing here in a lot of ways, but that might be a little too on-the-nose.
Are there any words we can come up with that have more of an implication of "this is a good comment/topic and I think more people should see it"? A term that, in itself, helps express the reason that people should be voting on things?
Edit: made this into the daily discussion for today since it's a good one anyway
I know you want to stick to using words and not icons, but this is definitely one instance where Iconography/Symbology comes in handy. Finding the "perfect" singular word for a complex mechanic is hard (especially with English) because of all the colloquialisms, subtext and historical usage of the words that muddle the issue. But a simple Up-Arrow, Thumbs-Up or similar icon/symbol does away with all those and makes the intent 100% clear.
Sure, but that just moves the issue a little bit, we still have to call it something in the end. People aren't going to say "I ↑ed this" or "I uparrowed it". Almost everywhere that uses a symbol, they still have a name for it. Facebook's thumbs-up is still "like", reddit's up arrow is "upvote", etc.
Then maybe there's value in inventing a new word, assigning it your own meaning free of other context. The only limitation is 'things that aren't already words' instead of 'the perfect English word'.
Im also new and not too familiar with the site, but it may also make sense to move away from a plus one minus one system, and find a different metric for boosting posts? I know it's not exactly possible, but if time spent reading a post could be tracked or some kind of metric that requires user interaction beyond a self reported democratic vote it would be best.
Well, we could roll with +, you see +1 fairly often as a reply on forum threads all over the internet. Not sure I like + better than 'vote' though.
We could just stick with a raw number. Even reddit doesn't call them upvotes or votes from a front page view. You have only a number and up/down arrows.
That doesn't solve the problem of how they'll be referred to in site lexicon though.
With these parameters, I've been mulling on some options. Not sure any really work out perfectly, but maybe one could be better than "vote." I don't know.
I like this. If you could get people to accept it as shorthand for "respect" and encourage them to make use of it with the
this is a good comment/topic and I think more people should see itline in mind I could see it catching on.Tough to grok at first and would definitely make people stop and think about it. That may not be a bad thing though. Maybe being forced to think about it for a moment will bring them a little closer to actually using it as a
this deserves to be seen by more peopleinstead of strictlyI agree with this and want others to agree with it too.I second tilde. Tildeing a post sounds very natural to say and has a unique signature of the website.
Has anyone mentioned “^” carets? It has the benefit of being part of the shape of the tilde, resembles an up arrow, and can be Used colloquially as “karat.” Implying that as a post/comment accumulates karats it has more value or worth to the overall group or topic.
Yeah, I'm not familiar with the terminology on other forums, but the more I discussed in the other comments, bump can have a negative connotation around it anyway. That's why I'm more sold on "boosts" right now. Especially over "votes" for the reasons I stated above.
That's awesome! Would people think it was stolen from early reddit if you used it here, though?
Not sure, that's what I was trying to come up with and so far "boost" seems the closest. But, it does feel like there's a better word out there I haven't found yet.
Note: This is second time I submitted a new comment instead of a reply. Is it just me or does the box on the bottom throw others off too?
What about just calling it feedback? The issue there is that "feedback" doesn't indicate a positive connotation, which is what you're after with this part:
You could at minimum change the boxes from (e.g.) "3 | votes" to "3 | score".
Spitballing: Feedboost, feedbump, til-do (or conversely, til-don't if negative votes existed), spur (synonym of boost), etc.
If that's the goal of the vote, can the voting system also be combined with things like number and oengths of replies to create a total 'feedback' score?
A check mark perhaps?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Check_mark
This can mean two things, you the user have checked it saying it agrees to you. A user seeing a thread has # of checks, means that many people saw it, checked it and agree with it.
Going with the waveform theme, why not "Amp" (short for "amplify", of course)?
"I'll amp your post"
"this post has an amplitude of 5"
etc.
I like the idea of an "elevate" button. I think it has a nice connotation and if we're working as a community to push good stuff to the top then we're definitely elevating each others efforts. I like that thought.
Yup, "elevate" is definitely my favorite. It's nice that it denotes a positive interaction without implying assent: you can elevate a good post without necessarily agreeing with it. It's very supportive and constructive.
Thanks! I think we need to get away from a points system and humanize the process a little.
I've been thinking about this for a while and I'm starting to warm up to the idea of calling Merit, as in, Give Merit rather than voting. Merit sends the right kind of connotation - we're looking for the quality, not just the agreement - and it implies you're giving the people you 'vote' on more merit, which, in a quiet, patient, long-term sort of way, you are.
I like it!
For comments, I saw that the Globe & Mail (Canadian newspaper) use the word "Respect" in their new comment system, so you can give respect without necessarily agreeing with a point of view. This might be worthwhile for the commenting system.
For submission voting, I prefer the upvote arrow. It's used everywhere, alternatively you can use +1 (I think Google+ had that, and I know it shows up on Hipchat and Slack chats)
Ooh, I like "Respect".
Ideas, in keeping with the idea that some major things about ~ are denoted by symbols:
Ideas around words that are positive, but don't seem to have preconceived forum meanings, afaik:
All those terms can be seen as something kind of negative though since they’re kind of synonymous with “agree”. Ideally we want people to vote on thing even if they don’t agree with them if they’re are well thought out, civil in tone and worth reading.
I do like the idea of simply using + or ^ and calling the results “score” though... a lot, actually.
I think it's hard to capture "I think this is worth reading, but I may or may not agree with it" in a single word, though I guess "Score" is kind of close.
I picked each of those terms because I felt that they were distinct from agreement, but I think the english language is just a bit too muddled in this case.
I think + and Score are pretty good though. Very intuitive, describes what's happening, and we can add to the list of symbols that mean something to ~.
~ -> the system
@ -> a person
+ -> increment the score
What about instead of "score" it was "grade"? The users could "upgrade." ;)
OK, that's probably confusing, though hahaha
I meant to reply to your comment, but made a new one by accident :(
My problem with + is that it is also used for expanding comment thread (when you collapsed it using - ). That mechanic is also used that way extensively across different platforms.
Y'all are overthinking it, just go with +1, and call it score! People will figure it out.
I see a lot of people suggesting bump, and I almost like it, but it's got too much prior meaning in the context of forums. When you bump a post -- you refresh its activity, bringing it to the top of the 'latest activity' list. You're not voting on it. Also, it sounds a little silly. What sounds better: "My post has 2300 bumps!" or "My post has 2300 score!"?
How about like the +1 idea but instead of plus one it's ~1 and assigns between 0 to 4 votes randomly?
It's play on the common usage of tilde as "approximate" and maybe helps in some way with obscuring analysis needed for vote manipulation (not really sure on that last part TBH).
I think this is a really cool idea. I like how it'd assign a random number of votes within a certain threshold. The ~1 is great too.
All the suggestions are a bit too much like upvote for my liking.
I suggest we call it a snargle.
"Great post, got my snargle."
"I was so impressed that I had to snargle this!"
"This post is pure snargleicious"
I assumed you made up the word, but I found it here.
Ha ha ha, I kinda did make it up, but I guess nothing is really new in the world :-)
I like bump. My issue with 'vote' is that it carries too many democratic connotations - that everyone gets a vote, that all votes are equal, that you have some kind of 'right' to be voting. Bump ditches all of that for the simple idea that it pushes things up the page. Bump does have other less positive connotations, though. I still can't find any other words I like better... merits, honors, kudos, raise, kicks... they don't work well in a forum.
We will have to translate our voting and tagging terms into other languages for internationalization. That should be interesting...
Yeah, push, lift, boost, raise, float, etc... could also work well without any issues but I honestly think the issues with using bump are way overblown. And I really, really, really like Bump since it's an homage to the forums of old, but modernized, which is exactly what tildes is attempting!
But for totals: 10 Pushes, 10 Lifts, 10 Raises sound a bit off too, even though they work well for the action.
Boost as an action seems intuitive to me and 10 boosts works just as well. I feel like there's a better option nobody said yet that I can't think of ;)
10 Bumps sounds good though. No extra E required. ;)
"up"?
Yeah, I brought that up in my reply to the other comment. How do you feel about boosts?
Boost sounds like a good name for the super-upvote, if the normal votes are called bumps. ;)
Oh man.. that is perfect. Bump for "vote", Boost for "supervote". Now we just need to convince @deimos. :P
I don't know if I can stomach "bump" though. Never been a fan of its usage in other forums.
My off-the-wall contribution to this discussion is "spur". Like we're spurring it on by adding to the post score.
Yeeehaw! Yeah, I dunno how I feel about spur. :P
It's certainly the most unique of any terms thrown around here!
Flargenflom is incredibly unique but I don't think that qualifies it for consideration. ;)
I upflargenflommed your comment.
Yeah! Or alternatively "boost" and "overdrive"? Hahahah
Ehh, I don't like bump to be honest. Would you ever say "I bumped that post"?
Vote seems fine I think, since it does involve a choice: "I think this post is better than the other ones."
People used to literally 'bump' posts, so yes I could see it.
I am in favor of "recognize" or "acknowledge" (ack?). It implies you find what you are reading worth recognizing but doesn't necessarily imply you agree or disagree with it.
I feel like a lot of these can be interpreted in the same way as upvoting is often interpreted as "I agree with this" rather than "this is useful".
I'd prefer something more explicitly stating that this is a useful comment instead of one you agree with.
[this is useful +] or something similar...
Yeah, vote implies a choice (which is not the case on ~ since there is no downvote) but the other problem is that it implies every vote is equal (which is also not the case on ~ once trust:vote-weight comes into play).
Bump <--- A few of us suggested that already... @deimos didn't like it because it is already established nomenclature on forums. I personally don't see that as a problem and think it would be an awesome name. Bump could be seen as an homage to forums in the same way community hierarchy and referring to communities as "groups" is to Usenet. Bump (in the forum use sense) is also perfect because it implies providing an increase in visibility, a bump (the word itself) can vary in strength and there is no "anti-bump" aka downvote, all of which are true of the "vote" mechanic on ~.
I say ~ brings back the bump! :P
What about something like
awardfor the verb andpointsfor the noun? Scoring is probably a better analogy than voting since it's common in games/sports to only gain points.Sounds better to me, but award feels like something special you'd do (similar to reddit gold) not something to try and make the thing more visible.
How about "upvote"?
This term is already widely used. And it also makes clear that there is only upvotes and no downvotes.
That's a good idea too!
Yeah, maybe "boost" would solve the nomenclature issue then? I'm not familar with other forums, but if it's a relatively unused term for this context, it works for the same reasons you described:
"10 boosts" tells you what you want to know, they can vary in strength too, and there's no anti-boost.
Did you mean to reply to my comment?
Honestly, I don't think the nomenclature issue with bump is really all that bad. Word meanings change and even though the "vote" mechanic on ~ isn't the exact same as the bump mechanic on forums, they are still damn close in results (increased visibility) and bump, the actual word itself, is a perfect fit.
Oops, sorry, my brain saw the box under it and assumed I clicked reply already :)
Yeah, I think either would be fine. More partial to boost now that I think of it because "bump" does have some negative connotation to it: Like bumping into people.
I like the ticks. Wait, that sounds weird when I read it back ;)
I avoided words like endorse, approve, applaud, and appreciate because I think the point is you want to express the post/comment is worthwhile, not necessarily that you agree with it. These make it seem like it should be an "agree" button, which I don't think is a good idea.
Yeah, I think we want to steer well clear of metrics that imply 'agree' or 'disagree'. I think we want tildes to be a more 'facts' vs 'bullshit' place.
Ah man, I did the new comment instead of replying again? What's wrong with me? Hahahha
I keep making that mistake too. Something about the tildes layout has tricked me into that a couple of times...
what about an "elevate" button? When you're elevating a topic you're meaningfully pushing it to the top, and it also sort of elevates the OP as good contributor.
I like elevate too.
Sanction or endorse seem to fit the intent. It's not implicit agreement, or acknowledgement of truth, but a method of saying "this content is worthy of inclision."
I would use "sway":
Other possibilities worth thinking about:
To indicate that a post is good:
cool / nice / good / super / great
To indicate that a post deserves to move up on the activity feed:
up / rise / plus / step
I feel like a lot of these can be interpreted in the same way as upvoting is often interpreted as "I agree with this" rather than "this is useful".
I'd prefer something more explicitly stating that this is a useful comment instead of one you agree with.
[this is useful +] or something similar...
I say we steal my username and just call label it "good?". It answers the question of, "is this content any good?" Maybe I just wanna see my name all over the place...
More seriously, I'm leaning more towards a symbol (=, ^, etc.) being the right choice. It fits the theme of the site name, and a lot of these suggestions are just too much of a mouthful, or imply too specific of a meaning.
I really don't like "bump". It already has a different connotation, and just seems lazy to try and co-opt it into a new meaning specifically for here.